


That's Where You're Wrong!

by Doctor_Watson_42



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, Psychological Trauma, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29290644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doctor_Watson_42/pseuds/Doctor_Watson_42
Summary: Takes place during “Abyss” (season 6, episode 6), expanding a Daniel and Jack scene, and Jack reflects on his guilt about his son. There will be angst. It gets dark. Warning: suicide/ mentions of torture.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	That's Where You're Wrong!

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "Abyss" and the Stargate movie. So Jack probably has a lot of angst about Charlie, what with how suicidal he was in the original movie, and one wonders how much this affected him during the events of "Abyss" and Ba'al's torture. Jack even confesses to Daniel, in an intense moment in the episode that he's a better man than he is, which is an intriguing insight into Jack's psyche, and likely the sheer guilt that's been weighing on him since Charlie's death.  
> Warning: this will be dark, and has suicide/trauma as a central theme.

“You’re a better man than that,” Daniel said.

“That’s where you’re wrong!” Jack yelled violently, all of the pain and fury and agony of the last few weeks (that could have been an eternity, for all he knew) fused into his words like a demented sort of steel. Daniel had always been better. Sure, he could be naive sometimes, but he always saw the good in people. But how could he possibly see the good in Jack?

How could Jack ever forgive himself after what happened to Charlie?

There was a moment where time froze, and they stared at one another. At last, Daniel nodded his head slightly, and turned away, as though what he had to say was far too all-encompassing, far too important to say to anyone or anything but the cold, cell walls.

“Right now, I can’t imagine doing or being anything other than what I am. I see things, I understand things, in a way I never could have before. But I chose this. Even when Jaob was trying to heal me, I chose this. But you in the place you’re at right now, you don’t have any other choices. This is not your life we’re talking about, Jack! This is your soul!”

Jack shook his head. Maybe his soul wasn’t worth saving.

“This is it!” Daniel insisted, “What I’m offering is your only way out.”

“You’re wrong about that too,” Jack said solemnly, “I have another choice.”

Daniel closed his eyes and shook his head, half concern, half frustration at how stubborn Jack could be sometimes, “What are you talking about?”

Jack only looked at Daniel, his look, resolved, stern, and desperate all at once. Daniel had seen that look before, on Abydos, when Jack had been depressed and suicidal. Was this a relapse? Was that what this was? But he wouldn’t do it. He wasn’t about to let Jack die, “No.”

“Any minute, they’re gonna come. Ba’al is gonna kill me again. You can make it the last time.” Jack’s voice was cracking with desperation, cracking like his sanity, his very being.

“Don’t ask me to do that.”

“You can put an end to it.”

“I won’t do it.”

The cell’s gravity began to change with a horrible clicking. Jack looked up and Daniel did too, both knowing what was coming.

“I’d do it for you, and you know it,” Jack said bitterly as he lay down on the floor, getting ready for the room to shift its gravity again, “I don’t want to see this cell again, Daniel.”

The heavy clink of Jaffa boots entered, and soon after, Jack was dragged away to face yet another gruesome death.

And the worst part was that Daniel was gone.

***  
It was bright. Bright, white light flooded Jack’s vision, and his first instinct was to vomit. He held it down. Because he knew that he had just died, and Ba’al wasn’t about to let him stay dead. It may have been the tenth time, or the hundredth time, but none of that mattered. Not as long as it kept on going. It was strange, dying. They say that your life flashes before your eyes, just before you die, and maybe that was true the first time. But all the times that followed, all of the deaths that followed, in all of them he only saw pain. Pain, guilt, and always, always the day Charlie died. How could he have been so careless that he let his son, his own son, die in his own house? How come he couldn’t have locked away his gun, his gun which to him, and all the death he carried, was so commonplace to him - how come he hadn’t been able to save his son from him? His past, his weapon, his work? It was all his fault.

That was, perhaps, the cruelest pain of it. Because knives can only cut so deep, acid can only burn for so long, but guilt...guilt is forever. Guilt, like Ba’al never ending torture comes back, always comes back, and there’s no stopping it. Here, where he was right now, in this place (was the place really a prison of his captor, or a prison of his mind? Who’s to say?), there was no mercy, no reason, no ending, no hope. No hope at all. There just...pain.

The Jaffa dragged him out, again, back into his cell, again, which in its own way was a special kind of torture - and Ba’al knew that fact very well. Because being alone with your own thoughts is more painful than any earthly torture.

He might take comfort in knowing that Daniel was there, only apparently ascension meant sitting around on their collective butts while the universe burned.

But even so, Daniel was still a better man than he was. In many ways, that’s what drew him to the archeologist. His endearing naivete, his willingness to believe in the general goodness of the universe gave him hope. Daniel was hope, that’s what he was.

But there was no hope here. And Daniel had been gone for so long. Too long. He was dead, what did he expect?

This particular round of torture was going to be worse than the last. Ba’al always promised it would get worse, and once he was inclined to believe the Goa'uld’s word. As he was stuck to the grate in that damn torture chamber, pulled by an unbreakablly strong gravity, he looked around, anxiously trying to figure out how he’d die this time. Knives? Acid? Multiple knives?

And then he saw it...his gun. And not just any gun, but the one that Charlie had found, that day, and thought it was a toy, and then...

Ba’al sat across the room, leaned over curiously and inspected the thing. With a smirk, he boomed, “These tau'ri weapons are greatly different than those used by my Jaffa. So much more...efficient.”

Jack grimaced a moment, before catching himself and changing his expression to neutral. He couldn’t break. He wouldn’t.

“So why don’t you just shoot me?” he strained to say, “Let’s get this over with, already.”

Ba’al leaned back in his chair, “Do you want to know why we Goa’uld have our Jaffa use the same staff weapons as they did over a thousand years ago?”

“Not really.”

Ba’al smiled in a faux friendliness, “It’s because it’s so much more painful than an efficient weapon, such as this. A slow death makes for so much more terror, does it not, colonel O’Neill?”

Ba’al paused a moment, looking for a reaction. Jack stayed stone faced, unreadable, so Ba’al pushed further, “Ah, but what about those quick, efficient deaths, ah? I make it a point to gather information on my enemies, and you had a son, did you not? What was his name, now?”

Charlie. His son. His fault.

“Bastard!” Jack grit out, despite himself.

Ba’al chuckled in cruel amusement, before dropping into an insincere sympathy, “I can’t imagine the guilt you must feel about your own son shooting himself with your own gun.”

Jack’s vision was red with fury, fury so powerful that it clouded his mind, his thoughts. The only thing he could hear was a pained sound escaping his mouth, an intermittent held back cry. “I’ll kill you!” he yelled in a broken voice, blinded by suddenly returning memories of every long, terrible night when he thought about what he could have done better, but couldn’t.

Ba’al frowned faintly in thought, “That is...doubtful. As a matter of fact,” There was a sliding sound as the gun slid across the floor, landing beside Jack on the grate, “I can prove it to you. You can have the gun. One bullet. And you can try to kill me, although, I imagine you wouldn’t get very far after that...or...you can turn the gun on yourself, this time around.”

Jack stared at the gun mouth agape, “You can’t honestly think -- “

Jack strained against the force of that strong artificial gravity which held him to the grate, managing to grab the gun. His gun. Daniel had said that he was a better man than him. But Daniel was wrong.

“You made a big mistake, Ba’al,” he growled trying to point it at Ba’al, “I don’t know if a bullet would make it past the artificial gravity you have me locked down with, but if it does, I get to watch you die. If it doesn’t, then I die again. I’d say I have a fifty fifty shot.” He leveled the gun with both hands at Ba’al, “I can’t wait to watch you die, you arrogant snack headed bastard.”

The goa'uld remained strangely calm, resigned to the whole situation as he leaned against a fist, “Come now, Colonel - surely I would never place myself in a situation where I had such a significant risk of being killed. Besides,” and a hint of a smirk tugged at the corner of his lips, knowing that he had won, and everything he said would break Jack O’Neill just a little bit more, “There’s so much that you’re hiding. I can sense it. You regret what happened, that day, to your son, and I could make you forget it. Is that why you haven’t tried to escape yet? Do you think that if you are put through the sarcophagus enough times, that you will somehow forget?”

“Well, it’s not exactly like I can jump fifty feet out of those cells of yours.”

Playing dumb. Because that’s what Jack O’Neill did when he was out of his depth.

“Just tell me what I want to know, and I can make you forget it all.” Ba’al offered, “All you have to do is turn the gun on yourself.”

“I told you, I don’t remember a thing!” Jack insisted. But then he paused. Tentatively, tears welling in his eyes, and this time not from any physical pain, Jack turned the gun. At himself.

“Pull the trigger, Colonel O’Neill, and you can forget it all.”

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, Ba’al,” Jack sneered, “I don’t want to forget.”

Bang!

Jack woke up in the sarcophagus, the bright light assaulting his newly repaired eyes, and after he was dragged back to his cell, punched the wall violently, over and over again until the bones in his hands began to break. But the truth was that he had broken. Ba’al knew exactly how to get to him, and he had. If he had to go back into that torture chamber one more time...he swear he’d tell him. Tell him things that he’d just stated to remember, how he’d really come here to rescue someone and then he’d do to her what he’s doing to him. That couldn’t happen, damn it! But he was just so tired of it all.

You’re a better man than that.

“Daniel,” he breathed, but no one was there, “That’s where you’re wrong.”


End file.
